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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979356">A Coin Once Flipped Keeps on Spinning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy'>Envoy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Background Nancy Wheeler, Focus is on Steve and Jonathan's friendship development, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, Multi, Period-Typical Misogyny and Homophobia, Polyamory, Pre-Season 3 Timeline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:09:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979356</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And although they were play-acting at something he felt like he was coming back into himself. Some of the ol’ razzle dazzle flooded back. He would concede to Jonathan in the face of a monster, he’d surrender in a fist fight because who was he kidding, he would even surrender his girlfriend (not that it had been up to him, obviously), but in this situation he felt himself taking charge. He wasn’t James Dean but he’d always been able to turn a few heads. What if – just maybe, there was a way he could play the leading man for Jonathan too.</i>
</p><p>Steve unwittingly begins a game of who's who that threatens to turn his last weeks of high school even more upside down.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jonathan Byers &amp; Steve Harrington &amp; Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>‘Hello, Mrs Byers.’</p><p>Joyce Byers squinted at him briefly and without much interest. It was clear she was still unsure who he was, but Steve’s grin only lifted higher. Her roughly tied hair did not look overly familiar with a comb. Everybody knew the things people said about Mrs Byers’s sanity, but it was apparent to Steve that she was in the middle of something more important than him, so he stepped up his cheerful salesman’s patter a notch. <em>Lovely day</em>, and <em>have you heard who moved in down the block</em> etcetera. He hadn’t got his foot in the door as such but he did have his hand balanced jovially on the door frame. Before too long his overenthusiastic niceties had bored her enough to relent. She let the door fall open, already desperate to get on.</p><p>‘Jonathan! Umm…’</p><p>‘Steve,’ he provided helpfully.</p><p>‘Steve is here to see – oh there you are.’</p><p>Jonathan had frozen rigid where he stood in the hallway, unable to conceal his dismay. Joyce looked between the two boys, assessing.</p><p>‘Do you boys need anything or…?’</p><p>‘We’re fine,’ Jonathan cut in quickly, with a hastily pasted on smile.</p><p>The place was a mess, that much was obvious from a curious glance through the doorways. Cheap and ugly cuckoo clock next to last year’s calender in the hallway; clothes flung haphazardly over furniture; wallpaper, crayon drawings and sticky tape all peeling off the walls.</p><p>Byers led the way reluctantly to his own room, closed his bedroom door urgently behind them and stood mutely against it as Steve sat himself on his bed – dishevelled, distinctly unmade. It smelled not unpleasant in there, a little musty and lived in, a little like talc and correction fluid. He crossed one leg over the other and had to enjoy the feeling of trespass; the way Jonathan’s eye twitched and hands trembled at his sides as he itched to get Steve out of there. Steve flattened out a crease in the sheet beside him with the palm of one hand and smiled unnervingly.</p><p>‘You don’t need to crap your pants. I’m just paying a friendly visit.’</p><p>There was a resounding silence.</p><p>‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that?’ he said a little too loudly, so Mrs Byers would probably hear him.</p><p>Jonathan looked up from the floor, expression distinctly <em>pleading</em>.</p><p>‘My mum’s here… and Will. Can it – can you just wait?’</p><p>But he wasn’t planning on waiting and hurting a second longer. Jonathan shrunk away from Steve as he stood up and kicked a dirty sock across the rug with the distinct aim of embarrassing him.</p><p>Only a matter of months left of their senior year and Steve had to spend it on his own, watching his whole world crumble around him and <em>this</em> <em>thing</em> between Byers and Nancy unfold under his nose – I mean, who in their right mind would have seen that partnership coming? Not him a year ago, that’s for sure. He had seen monsters trying to take over the world and no one even had the decency to ask him how he was feeling, let alone fill him in on what they were getting up to behind his back.</p><p>‘Nothing heavy, I know you’ve all been through a lot. It would just be nice if someone paid me the courtesy of talking to me.’</p><p>Somehow Jonathan’s tacit and silent disdain only fuelled the venom he felt. He threw open the wardrobe in the hope and dread of finding an item of Nancy’s clothing but found only a few flannels.</p><p>‘There’s nothing there,’ Jonathan said quietly.</p><p>He had moved a little way into the room behind Steve, who whirled and stalked towards him until Jonathan was forced back against the wall beside his shabby cluttered desk. He waited until he had him cornered, eyes darting everywhere to avoid Steve’s challenging stare, which was gratifying. Like the hesitancy of his voice, in that half-whisper he had.</p><p>‘What are you doing?’</p><p>Steve leaned in, and Jonathan leaned away, like he was expecting a slap across the face.</p><p>‘I want to know what she felt like, when she…’</p><p>Byers’s whole body went still with shock. What was that science thing about conservation of energy? It was like that now, like he could feel the vibrations of Jonathan’s stillness humming between them while his mind played catch up with the words that’d just come out of his mouth. Steve’s palm was spread against the wall by Jonathan’s head and was slightly sweaty, his arm blocking any exit. He was hot all over actually. And too pumped up to feel guilty for the intimidation tactics. It was all posturing, and Jonathan could look down on him for it all he wanted – what else had Steve got to lose? Big Steve, King of the Roost. Big Steve with his big broken heart. Besides, what was a bit of acting tough, after the things they’d seen? He knew now how steadfast and unafraid timid-looking Jonathan Byers really was when it came to the crunch.</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ Jonathan whispered.</p><p>And then the weirdest thing, Steve watched Jonathan’s face tip upward slightly. Half-lidded eyes skittered across Steve’s jawline to his mouth and lingered there. His skin was white and chalky, shadowed under his eyes. Someone needed to give this guy a good meal and a hot bath. A buzz of adrenaline started at the base of Steve’s skull.</p><p>His threw a longing look towards the closed door – escape. But he couldn’t make himself move, somehow, held there suspended by the vibrations of stillness radiating off Jonathan. He found he had to know what Jonathan would do. As they slid back across the room, his eyes caught on Lou Reed’s Transformer album leaning against the wall. He didn’t know the music but he didn’t think much of the cover art. Deviant, frankly. Not to mention the oddball arts and crafts junk scattered about the place. Of course he was like this, Steve realised with something like terror.</p><p>At the same moment Jonathan’s eyes finally flickered up to his own, and they were soft and deep black at the same time, weirdly fucking intense. The most inscrutable blackest eyes he’d ever seen.</p><p>Sounds were muffled in his ears and his heart had slowed to a dull syrupy thud. He could taste Byers’s breath in the air and his hand hung between them like a promise. He knew what was happening, of course he did.</p><p>‘I don’t actually– Stop– Nancy– ’</p><p>With a ragged breath and a shock of fear, he forced himself to snap out of it and step abruptly back.</p><p>‘Don’t– don’t touch me.’</p><p>Jonathan looked confused and chastened, like a kicked puppy, lifting a hand through his limp fringe.</p><p>‘You said– ’</p><p>‘I know what I said, dumbass.’</p><p>He didn’t think he’d actually <em>do</em> it, for chrissake. Did the guy not have a mind of his own? What was going through his head the whole time?</p><p>‘Do you just not think about that stuff? Going behind people’s backs? Behind <em>her</em> back?’</p><p>He just stared at the ground. Steve was at a loss. He threw both hands palms up in the air.</p><p>‘Jeez, I do not understand you people. Good luck to you both, or whatever.’</p><p>He took the stairs two at a time and practically ran through the front door. At that second you could not have paid him to stay in that freaky house a second longer.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>2.</p><p>If possible, he was avoiding Steve even harder than ever now, looking extremely uncomfortable any time they happened to be stood in the same hallway. And Steve wasn’t quick to do anything about it, seeing as Byers had stolen his girl and all. Sure, he’d called him a queer before but now there was some substance to it, he guessed. Something he could use to spread the word that Byers was not only a pervert but a molester.</p><p>It was the sort of thing that might actually earn him some social capital in this gossip-mongering town, and that was something he no longer had a whole lot of.</p><p>It was uncanny, though. It set his nerves on edge. He’d thought they were done with all that wackiness, but he was starting to have new questions that he felt were really none of his concern. Being up close to Byers had brought back feelings of vertigo. And monsters. When the whole edifice of reality had crumbled around him there had been one second of stillness: an urgent face, a hand pressed into his own. These had been the last things before everything had changed. He’d kind of forgotten these small details since, but now he couldn’t get them out of his head. He wanted to ask Nancy if she’d felt this way after the night Barbara had disappeared, like everything was off-kilter and just a tiny bit changed in a way you couldn’t really explain to anyone without sounding like a nut. He was feeling like he understood for the first time why girls got nervous after sleeping with a guy, like the world would suddenly change without you. At the time he’d thought it was cute and silly of Nancy. But now. It was like he expected people to be able to smell it on him, not that he’d… He hadn’t <em>done</em> anything, but the <em>idea</em> was… She would understand, he thought, but he couldn’t ask her.</p><p>Byers felt it too, he was sure. He had been calm in a crisis, like Nancy, adaptable to change. When Steve was still completely clueless. But Byers had tried to kiss him. Byers was part of the weirdness too.</p><p>Despite the brief notoriety the family had gained in Hawkins, it might as well be as if Jonathan didn’t exist most of the time, practising his disappearing act like a Houdini in training. Hanging behind the crowds when the bell sounded, hustled and pushed around at the lockers when he tried to put his books away. Waiting until the day he could finally walk out of that building forever, no doubt. Well, that made two of them. He watched him like he’d never watched him before, not after finding his stalker photographs, not after seeing him with Nancy, not any of that. Watched how he walked down the school corridor with his hurried gait, like he was trying to squeeze into a very small space. Stiff like he was made of popsicle sticks.</p><p>He rounded the corner straight into Steve, eyes popping wide like saucers.</p><p>‘What- Sorry-’</p><p>And then his eyes screwed up a bit and he yanked up the straps on his satchel and stepped around Steve, who moved to block him.</p><p>‘Look, man, this is… you basically saved me from…’ he waved a hand noncommittally, ‘The first time anyway. I’m not about to crap all over you. I’m not a complete asshole.’</p><p>Jonathan shuffled his feet.</p><p>‘Okay.’</p><p>‘So you can stop casting hexes on me with your eyes or whatever. I don’t understand a damn thing about you, but, you and Nance deserve to be happy, so…’</p><p>He hadn’t meant to sound that sad, really. He thought he caught a glimpse of regret light up in the back of Jonathan’s eyes but really that could have been any emotion.</p><p>He did understand something about Byers. He understood how someone who wasn’t used to getting anything he wanted would grab it with both hands and not think so much about anyone else.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>( ‘Steve, I slept with him. I’m so sorry.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Her big ocean colour eyes had filled up with tears and he had felt his heart turn leaden so that it dragged at his chest like a weight. Thing was, he’d known already, really.</em>
</p><p>‘<em>Wait, I want us to talk about this properly, I want to explain. I’m sorry, Steve.’</em></p><p>‘<em>I don’t want to talk.’</em></p><p>
  <em>He heard the words coming out of his mouth but had no thoughts to go with them, and then he was turning around and walking away, leaving Nancy stood at his door in tears. Funny that, him walking away, when it had been her who had finished it. )</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After that he and Jonathan began to exchange cold, awkward half-smiles in passing. It was almost civil. He had taken Dustin Henderson under his wing, and that was a whole other story, the reasons for which were obscure to him at the moment. In consequence, the crew he rolled with was a little different these days. More often than not he found himself ferrying half the kid’s in Hawkins around town. He’d drop the boys off at the Byers’s and wave stupidly from the car when Will’s older brother opened the door for them. Sometimes he even got a wave back.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p>‘Hi, Mrs Byers.’</p><p>Joyce brightened at the sight of him and, goddamn, if he wasn’t starting to see something charming about the rough shininess of the whole Byers clan.</p><p>‘Steve, isn’t it? Thank you for dropping Will off the other day, that was really sweet,’ she kept talking as she slipped past him where he stood just inside the doorway, hitching a bag onto her shoulder and lighting the cigarette in her mouth at the same time. A haywire static charge and slightly sunken look around the eyes were the only indications she wore of having seen a boyfriend get eaten by a demadog right before her eyes. She turned as if just thinking of something, ‘Oh! Please stay, there’s plenty of food. Jonathan will show you, won’t you Jonathan?’</p><p>Steve threw him an apologetic glance. The whole situation was awkward as hell. Joyce was placing a careful kiss on both her son’s cheeks and whispering conspiratorially to them. It was the kind of behaviour that Steve would have found horrifically embarrassing, but the Byers were basically unselfconscious about this sort of thing.</p><p>Not that Steve’s opinion meant crap anyway.</p><p>‘Uh, really, I was just driving Dustin here…’</p><p>Dustin chose that moment to follow him inside and barrelled past him.</p><p>‘The secret bunker has been entered!’</p><p>Steve snorted. He couldn’t help it, it was a nerves thing.</p><p>The whole room quieted, and all five kids stared. Apparently getting psyched out by a bunch of teenyboppers was his life now, which was, you know, kind of depressing. Dustin rounded on him with a look of appalled indignation.</p><p>‘What? What’s funny about a secret bunker?’</p><p>‘Yeah, really witty,’ Jonathan muttered behind his shoulder just loud enough for Steve to hear.</p><p>Steve ruffled the kid’s thicket of hair.</p><p>‘When you’re older champ.’</p><p>‘… You brought <em>Steve Harrington</em>?’</p><p>Nancy’s little brother had inherited her lack of tact, but he was obviously only saying what was on everybody’s minds.</p><p>‘Of course I did, dumbass. You’ve seen what he can do with a flame thrower.’</p><p>‘Dude, that was not a flame thrower, that was a lighter.’</p><p>‘Whatever.’</p><p>His stomach did a little flip and he was definitely not gonna cry like a big girl’s blouse but he was suddenly immensely grateful to this goofy little kid who looked like a mop turned upside down and talked him up like he was something. He allowed himself to be dragged through the kitchen doorway by Dustin, accidentally throwing his grin across the room at Jonathan, pallid and ambiguous looking as ever. The grin fell away after he held their eye contact too long, but he didn’t miss how Jonathan’s coldness had started to thaw into a translucent smile.</p><p>The kids’ idea of a party was apparently to spend all night playing this nerdy little board game, although it beat him how they could still talk about make-believe monsters now. Wheeler was irritable and distracted because that magic girl was still hidden away, and they weren’t supposed to talk about her. Dustin and Lucas pulled faces in the pictures Jonathan took while Will stood unnervingly still in the foreground. When they were engrossed Steve managed to slip away, wandering down the hall where patches of wallpaper were missing, torn away like someone had been ripping stuff off all the walls and ceilings. The door to Jonathan’s bedroom was ajar and he slipped inside. He popped a cassette out of the deck, but it was blank, just a white label on it saying ‘mix 9’. He rifled through a stack of crumpled paper, pulling out a scrap that had on it a black and white sketch of someone smashing a guitar. He peered, trying to make out the shape of the words crowded around the drawing in the whisky glow from Jonathan’s table lamp. <em>Perpendicular… the shape between the branches is something missing… I live by the river. </em>He couldn’t really make sense of it, disjointed words and phrases, and couldn’t help feeling like someone looking at evidence at a crime scene. Jonathan was exactly the kind of guy who would keep a journal full of stories about strangling cats or something, and his eyes started scanning the room to see if he could see one. You had to admit, this sort of behaviour was odd. If Byers was secretly strangling cats, it was his responsibility to find out and let Nancy know about it, just as a Good Samaritan of course.</p><p>‘It’s London Calling.’</p><p>‘<em>Jesus. </em>You scared the crap outta me. I’m not, uh, not snooping. I just saw the door was open and…’</p><p>‘The Clash.’ Will points at the paper in Steve’s hand, ‘He really likes them.’</p><p>He sits at Jonathan’s desk chair and looks back down at the drawing.</p><p>‘What do the words mean?’</p><p>‘I don’t know. It’s words from songs, and notes for his photography. All sorts of stuff.’</p><p>‘Huh.’</p><p>‘I think it’s good, that you’re friends now. He’s not very good at showing it, he’s shy with people, but he likes you. And Nancy. You’re good for him, I can tell.’</p><p>Jesus, okay.</p><p>‘We’re not really… What do you mean he likes me?’</p><p>‘I can just tell,’ Will shrugged.</p><p>He made a point to try and smile at Junior Byers because he was just a kid, and no kid should have to go through what he had gone through, even if he was undoubtedly much creepier on his own, stood in the doorway with the gloss of his bowl cut hair glistening in the light off the lamp. Steve wished he talked like other kids, who were annoying as hell, but he could deal with Dustin’s excitability or even Mike’s sharp tongue. Will was different to other kids, there was no way around that. He put the drawing back on the pile of papers.</p><p>‘You should take it, he won’t mind.’</p><p>He opened his mouth to explain to Will that he had no desire to hold onto one of his brother’s scribblings, but said nothing. He couldn’t really explain why he decided to fold the paper over and tuck it into his breast pocket, and when he looked up the kid was already gone.</p><p>When he returned all the lights were off and the kids were sat on the floor with a ring of candles like some kind of séance. The board of their game had been upturned on the carpet.</p><p>‘What if… there’s more than one upside down?’</p><p>‘How can there be more than one?’ Lucas said impatiently, lifting the board to demonstrate, ‘It’s like the board, two sided.’</p><p>‘We don’t know that,’ Mike persisted, ‘What if it has, I dunno, a million sides… ’</p><p>‘Like a coin spinning through the air,’ Will murmured quietly. Everyone in the room looked at Will and a shiver ran down Steve’s spine.</p><p>He searched out Jonathan’s pallid face in the candlelight. It looked captive, pensive.</p><p>‘Maybe once you’ve flipped the coin it just keeps turning,’ Jonathan added softly, introspectively, as if the words were meant for Steve, in a voice that fell down on him light and slow and cold like snow.</p><p>He was staying so quiet he was practically holding his breath, dizzy with guitars smashing through things and coins spinning end over end. He stared at Jonathan, head fizzing, as Jonathan said:</p><p>‘Maybe you’re never the right way up again once you’ve turned the coin over.’</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>4.</p><p>He heard feet on the kitchen tile behind him while he was stood at the snack table picking at a bowl of pretzels. Jonathan was wearing woollen socks and they made only the slightest sound on the floor.</p><p>‘Here,’ Steve said, holding out the pretzel bowl lamely, ‘at least there are snacks in this dimension.’</p><p>Well that fell flat as a pancake.</p><p>God knows he didn’t want to be trapped in any kind of dimension with Jonathan Byers.</p><p>‘Nancy couldn’t make it?’</p><p>It was the wrong time to mention her, he knew by the look on Jonathan’s face and the sinking in his own stomach. But what else was there? Throwing around for conversation he always fell back on the only thing they had in common.</p><p>‘No, she’s busy, I think.’</p><p>Right, well, that’s that then. Why in god’s name had he elected to chaperone a tiny nerd tonight and ended up in awkward stalemate at the Byers residence. One of these days he was going to give himself a stern talking to. It occurred to him that Jonathan had never asked why he was in his house.</p><p>‘I, uhh, don’t like them to go around alone too much,’ he said by way of explanation, gesturing towards the children in the other room.</p><p>The understanding he saw on Jonathan’s face was acute and made him even a little uncomfortable. Something had shifted between them in the company of the kids. A shared responsibility of care maybe.</p><p>‘I don’t have to stay though, I could…’</p><p>‘No, it’s okay.’</p><p>He nodded curtly, acknowledging that they probably both still felt strength in numbers. Jonathan had gone back to being edgy and jittery now that they were alone in a room. He rubbed his hands together agitatedly.</p><p>‘You want a beer?’</p><p>‘<em>Yes</em>.’ Steve nearly tripped over in his eagerness. Drinking might just make this night manageable. ‘I mean, if that’s cool.’</p><p>Jonathan snapped apart a six pack between slender fingers.</p><p>‘Sure, yeah, we don’t really drink them much, so.’</p><p>‘I didn’t really take you for a beer kinda family.’</p><p>‘Umm, it was Bob, mostly.'</p><p>‘Ah, mmm.’</p><p>Fuck, another awkward bereavement to field with someone he didn’t really like.</p><p>‘You don’t have to pretend to be sorry, it hit mom hard but I never really got on with him.’</p><p>Wow, Jonathan could be kind of a hard-ass. Steve raised his eyebrows.</p><p>‘<em>Cold</em>, Byers.’</p><p>But he was smiling. Jonathan shrugged.</p><p>‘It was mutual. I don’t think he ever approved of me, really.'</p><p><a id="_GoBack" name="_GoBack"></a>''Yeah, well,’ he popped the can, ‘he wasn’t the only one.’</p><p>At that moment one of the kid’s screams cut through the air like a hot knife through butter, followed by Dustin’s muffled voice: ‘It’s just a spider, you guys.’</p><p>Spider or not, a pall of fear fell across Jonathan’s whole body like the shadow thrown by something huge and dark, and he wobbled where he stood. Without thinking Steve reached out to support him, feeling the memory of that fear in his marrow.</p><p>‘Hey… he’s gonna be alright now. We all are.’</p><p>He settled for a hand on Jonathan’s back, which seemed like the least intimate way he could reach out. Not for the first time he wished Nancy was here to do this before realising his mistake. When Jonathan leaned slightly into the support he slid his hand up to squeeze his shoulder, which actually felt less weird.</p><p>Jonathan stumbled into a kitchen chair. His forehead was sheened with sweat. Steve lowered himself slowly into another chair a respectable distance away.</p><p>‘Should I… call…?’</p><p>‘No,’ he interjected immediately, ‘No, I’m fine. I just still get so scared sometimes.’</p><p>He dropped his voice to match Jonathan’s thin murmur.</p><p>‘Do you really believe that coin thing?’</p><p>‘I don’t know. I think Will still knows more than we do. He feels things.’</p><p>‘What happened that night?’</p><p>It wasn’t as if he’d ever been able to ask. And so, Jonathan told him in lowered tones how they had burnt the evil out of his brother, how they had burnt him until he screeched like an animal and Jonathan had thought he was going to die. How Nancy had branded him with the poker from the fire. His eyes glittered with tears as he spoke, like two black gemstones. Steve imagined Will’s waifish little body and shivered thinking about the force it had withstood.</p><p>‘How is he?’</p><p>‘He’s… still trying to rebuild his strength,’ he said as if reading Steve’s thoughts. His mouth twisted downwards, voice bitter with fear.</p><p>‘He will. Everything’s normal again now,’ Steve repeated redundantly. It wasn’t of course. Byers was with Nancy, Steve was an accidental babysitter, and the world was permanently upside down. ‘Let’s get drunk anyway.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>5.</p><p>It was cosy, he’d say that much. What exactly would have turned out differently if he’d had friends like Will and the others at their age, he wondered. The youngsters were mostly passed out or talking quietly to each other in a little fort of blankets and cushions on the floor of the living room. He wished his parents would swap some of their meaningless acquisitions for even a little of the battered warmth he felt between these walls. He was transfixed by the black square of the abandoned board game in the middle of the floor, so close to the spot where he had seen the demagorgon first and nearly crapped his pants. Black squares. Doors. Portals. Upside downs. Flip a coin, change everything. He took a valiant swig of his beer.</p><p>Jonathan chose to sit cautiously near him, holding his own beer so tightly in both hands that his knuckles were white, which drew Steve’s eye to the knot of tension he was clearly holding between his shoulders, and the sorrowful hollows of his cheeks. A bubble of sympathy floated up in his chest, seeing Jonathan’s effort, and knowing it was for his benefit. It was a strange crooked tenderness he never would have felt for a creep like him before, but here in this house Steve was very much reminded of the moment Jonathan had transformed before his eyes into a guy fearlessly defending them all from an interdimensional nightmare. He swallowed.</p><p>‘Turning up here the other week, that was shitty- ’ then he remembered that children were present and coughed, ‘I mean, <em>damn </em>out of order.’</p><p>Jonathan ducked his chin into his chest to cover his amusement and Steve found himself smiling down at the crown of his head.</p><p>‘I acted like a brat, I’m sorry. Well, I’m half sorry. It all happened so fast and now I miss her, that’s all.’</p><p>He’d been telling himself all the usual things: it wasn’t meant to be, it was time to man-up and prove to Nancy and his damn father that he could act with dignity. That he wasn’t just a good-for-nothing timewaster who’d never amount to anything and couldn’t even hold onto a goddamn goody two-shoes like Nancy Wheeler – <em>Stop. Shut up. </em>He shook his dad’s voice out of his head. It sucked, anyway.</p><p>‘I get it, the two of you had to go off and expose a whole secret science thing, that’s pretty cool.’ He grew maudlin, ‘Just wish it could’ve been with me. Wish I could’ve been there too.’</p><p>Jonathan was watching him.</p><p>‘I’m not talking, sort of, literally in the car with you, I mean metaphorically– ’</p><p>‘Yeah, I got that, thanks.’</p><p>It earned him another dry lopsided smile that made him feel stupid and his dad’s voice crept back into his head.</p><p>‘You’re wrong, though. That’s not the important stuff,’ Jonathan said, ‘That’s not the real fight. Life is full of monsters, just not the kind you can light on fire. There’s always gonna be stuff I have to protect Will from…’</p><p>‘Go on. You might as well get it off your chest now.’</p><p>‘It’s just…’</p><p>He shook his head. Steve furrowed his brows with concentration and Jonathan glanced up and saw that he was being listened to and responded. As if he struggled to squeeze the words out, but he felt them very deeply.</p><p>‘I get why you’d be mad. But you act as if Nancy, as if, as if she belonged to you or something. She didn’t even know you that well before…’</p><p>‘Oh, she used to be cool? Before she got interested in boys?’</p><p>Jonathan’s lips pressed together in frustration.</p><p>‘Well… yeah.’</p><p>‘She was a kid, Jonathan. Then she wasn’t. It’s normal. It was all normal.’</p><p>Honestly, he tried, he really did.</p><p>‘Oh yeah, great. Normal.’</p><p>He was picking at the denim of his jeans, a patch on his knees that was worn thin. Steve glanced between his hands carefully unpicking a loose thread and his lowered head, trying to keep his voice soft.</p><p>‘What do you mean?’</p><p>‘It’s fine for you, I guess, that’s all. It was never “normal” for me, or Will. Not like that.’</p><p>He loved Will so much it glowed through him and Steve thought he could feel the residual heat of it just by being near them. It made him kind of sad but also happy. He realised he genuinely respected that about Jonathan, the same thing he had once taunted him for: an unwavering loyalty to his family, however strange they all were.</p><p>‘<em>The other side of the coin.</em>’</p><p>Maybe he’d knocked back the first couple of beers too quickly, because saying it felt like a minor revelation. There was that slowly dawning surprise in Byers’s eyes again, the same look he’d had backed against the wall of his bedroom, and it was difficult to look away. His face cut all kinds of hard angles and made its own shadows in the low light, altogether not what Steve would have called a friendly face, but his eyes contradicted that, they were liquid and gentle and full of feeling. It was confusing, really.</p><p>He’d never seen, or imagined Jonathan drunk before. He pictured him more as the guy who stayed stone cold sober at a party in a way that was vaguely predatory. Now he was loose limbed and clumsy getting up out of his chair, tripping over a piece of model train set on the floor. Stevie Nicks sang <em>Like a Willow I Can Bend</em> yearningly out of the radio. Steve was drifting into daydreams in the armchair. The song’s words seemed so poignant right then.</p><p>‘Steve.’</p><p>A hand on his knee. Electricity. Steve shrugged his head in the direction of the kitchen and Jonathan sloped after him. He stood stock still in the middle of the room as Byers came past him and stumbled back against the sink, bony elbows knocking into pots and pans, with a single dry chuckle that caused warmth to bloom in Steve’s belly. They both heard the laugh catch drily in his throat. His hands were balled in the tattered sleeves of his sweater and warm over Steve’s ears. Everything sounded muffled and soft, the lowered voices of the kids just behind them in the next room easing his jangled nerves.</p><p>‘Still want to find out?’</p><p><em>( </em><em>I want to know what she felt when she… </em><em>)</em> The challenge that undercut Jonathan’s deadpan monotone charmed Steve, despite everything. He knew he wasn’t the subtlest guy on the planet, it just wasn’t his forte. And Byers was becoming more confusing by the day. He didn’t understand basic conversation, sure, but then he spoke in these levels that said two things at once. Something told him Jonathan knew exactly how uncomfortable he made Steve with this flirtatious dryness.</p><p>‘Well, I guess you owe me.’</p><p>Who made the first move? It would have been Nancy; this kid had never been kissed in his life. The splinter of pain stuck in his chest and then Jonathan was licking his lips nervously and gently tilting Steve’s face to the side and <em>goddammit</em> he was feeling a lot of something.</p><p>He stayed still like one of those dummies they practice first aid on. It wasn’t like a practice of anything though.</p><p>It felt like cotton candy… no, it felt like being slammed in the face with a whole fairground trailer of cotton candy, which was the last thing he’d have been prepared for. Something so sweet and intense about it clogging up his nose and ears and fingers. Byers’ hands cradled the back of his head, fingers peeking out from his sweater sleeves to curl through Steve’s hair. When he pulled away the world slid drunk and full like Steve had had ten beers not three.</p><p>‘The… the window, shit.’</p><p>The curtains were wide open. He suddenly panicked, Jonathan’s arms still draped around his neck.</p><p>‘It’ll give the neighbours something to talk about.’ Half amused, half bitter. It was like the guy was deadly serious all the time, even when he was joking, so it was hard to tell the difference. As if to prove a point he pressed their mouths together once more and then broke away to walk out of the kitchen.</p><p>
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</p><p>Steve felt distinctly nauseous after that, but also floaty and unreal, like he was walking on clouds. He made his way to the Byers’s bathroom and splashed his face with cold water. <em>Who are you</em> he mouthed to his reflection in the mirror. When he felt something close to normal again, he returned to the living room. Will was coloring quietly in the corner. He smiled at the other kids’ anecdotes and make-believe but seemed only half present in the room with them. His brother was sat cross-legged on the rug beside him. Steve lowered himself quietly into a chair, unnoticed, and watched them. Older and younger Byers counted out the colored markers in hushed undertones in a ritual that seemed old as time, that they had probably done since Will was in diapers. The harmony of their voices raised goose bumps all along Steve’s arms.</p><p>He hadn’t been sleeping too great recently and for once he wasn’t thinking of Nancy or anything. He tried valiantly to stay awake in the softened recesses of the armchair, but lost the battle. The last thing he knew as he slipped from consciousness was Jonathan’s soft, brittle voice reciting the colors of the rainbow.</p><p>
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</p><p>The feeling of peace that had settled over him when he woke in the armchair with a cricked neck the next morning meant it took him a good few minutes to realise that this was not, in fact, his home. The enticing smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen was followed by the humming of a woman who was not his mother. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with a groan. Someone had slung a blanket over his knees as he slept.</p><p>Still bleary eyed, Steve leant on his elbow against the doorframe and ran a hand through his hair, speaking quietly.</p><p>‘Hey, Mrs Byers?’</p><p>She snorted.</p><p>‘Oh please, I’m not your teacher.’</p><p>‘Right, <em>Joyce</em>. Thank you for… well, I didn’t mean to stay here all night but I did, clearly. I’ll be on my way out now. I just, if you ever needed someone to take Will, you know, just for an evening. Not that you can’t… that you’d need to… It’s just that I already drive that lot all over town and it wouldn’t be... Well, you know, just let me know.’</p><p>‘Uhu.’ He was rambling. But she didn’t say so. ‘Thanks, Steve.’</p><p>
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</p><p>6.</p><p>‘Hey, wait up! Jonathan!’</p><p>He stumbled over his steps and stared, giving Steve time to catch up. Jonathan looked back behind them as if he expected an ambush.</p><p>‘I’m on my own,’ he caught his breath and fell into step, squashing down the bitterness because an ambush is exactly what Steve would have planned for him in the past and it wasn’t his fault Steve felt shut out by everybody like some kinda stray dog. ‘I’m not trying to spring something on you. I just wanted to know how Will is.’</p><p>‘Yeah, well, I’m kind of busy with something.’</p><p>He spoke like he was being squeezed through a cheese grater, thin and strained, equal parts social ineptitude and distaste for Steve, he thought as he walked alongside him. He could see the him fidgeting inside the upturned collar of his jacket.</p><p>‘I haven’t seen you for a while. You okay? Is Will doing any better?’</p><p>Jonathan stopped short in the street and Steve had to turn around and take a step back to face him.</p><p>‘Stop this. I heard what you said to my mom.’</p><p>He was thrown for a second.</p><p>‘About Will? I meant it. I just want to help.’</p><p>‘But it’s none of your business. What do you want from me?’</p><p>‘I don’t want anything…’ Jonathan’s face folded into a sour frown and Steve could only gape at him, trying to find words. ‘You have to admit it’s weird though. Now. After… Doesn’t it bother you?’</p><p>For a second he thought Jonathan was about to lash out at him.</p><p>‘Look, I know this might be hard for you to comprehend, but I don’t care about your high school drama. I’m sorry Nancy isn’t into you anymore and you’ve been dumped by your idiot friends, but I don’t care. I have bigger things going on than you and Nancy, you know.’</p><p>‘Wow. Well that’s the most you’ve ever said to me.’</p><p>Had he just been rejected by the neighbourhood outcast? He really had fallen low. Jonathan took a step back and shoved both hands deep into his pockets.</p><p>‘I don’t want to be buddies with you just because you’ve dropped out of the position of Chief Asshole.’</p><p>‘Jeez, I got it the first time. Reading you loud and clear.’</p><p>The cold wind suddenly felt biting against his face. It must've showed, because Jonathan’s shoulders relaxed a little. He shook his head to move the hair from out of his eyes.</p><p>‘I’m not trying to be unkind. I just don’t understand you. We don’t like each other, it’s not like we’re gonna hang out now just because we shared the babysitting once.’</p><p>Once again, he was reminded that Jonathan could be hard as nails when he wanted to be, only this time he felt the chilly force of it himself. Like a blow to the chest. His next words came out more resentful than he intended.</p><p>‘I’m beginning to think you just pretend to be an oddball who can’t talk to people so you can say things like that.’</p><p>Jonathan simply shook his head again, and he had the gall to look bemused as well as hostile.</p><p>‘You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Now you can leave me alone.’</p><p>‘I got what I…’</p><p>Fuck. He let him walk away, feeling winded. And embarrassed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>7.</p><p>The pain didn’t go away now that he’d felt the softness of Jonathan Byers’s mouth and knew it was what Nancy had been able to fall for and that she might never have really felt for him. What combination of awkwardness, gentleness, and bottled-up passion had really done it for her? Was there a moment when she’d just looked at Jonathan and everything had come together, like Steve used to get watching her reading a textbook or doing her hair in a mirror? And what in god’s name was he playing at with Jonathan the other night?</p><p>His mind was racing as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the car, his normally smooth brows uncharacteristically knotted with stress. For a few minutes now he had been watching them from a distance. A stranger might not have even realised they were together. They were barely talking or looking at each other, just standing there, side by side outside the school’s front doors. He himself had certainly never been that subtle when it came to the language of love. But Steve saw the signs. Jonathan’s hand brushed her sleeve barely like he was scared to touch her and there was a shared glance: naïve, innocent, sickly sweet. He boiled, he could hardly bear it. There was an invisible wall of glass between him and them and he wanted to punch and kick it until it shattered to pieces.</p><p>‘What do you think dead-boy screws like?’</p><p>Steve was aware that certain people called Will Byers a zombie for logical, if cruel, reasons. Apparently the new moniker was being used for the whole family now too.</p><p>‘I think like this,’ and Tommy held his arms zombie like and thrust his hips and grunted, Carol giggling inanely. ‘Always knew there was something up with that one. What kind of creepy bitch spreads her legs for a freak like Byers? If she wasn’t so disgusting I’d set her straight myself.’</p><p>‘Don’t even think about it.’</p><p>Steve knew he had shocked Tommy coming up silently behind them where they were skulking behind the bushes, even if he pulled an ugly face to hide his surprise.</p><p>‘Harrington, we were just saying how your girl Wheeler has a thing for pussies. Explains a lot really.’ He squared up in front of Steve, ‘You <em>were</em> the first one to plough that lawn, weren’t you? Must be your fault she’s all twisted. What kind of dirty shit are you into, Stevie?’</p><p>A second of clammy panic gave way to an even stronger disgust. How he had ever tolerated Tommy’s dumb freckled face was beyond him.</p><p>‘If you ever valued a second of our friendship leave them the fuck alone.’</p><p>He saw snapshots from that night sometimes, fractured, like he couldn’t quite access them. But they were physical: fire, and Jonathan’s fist in his shirt, and running. And they had all come since he’d visited the Byers place a few weeks ago and got more than he’d bargained for. Feelings or memories. Half aware, like a wound being picked at. He knew looking at things was the right thing to do. Being honest about what Nancy and Jonathan meant to each other. And he tried to see Jonathan as a person, a real three-dimensional person, but all it did was cause him pain.</p><p>‘Don’t tell me what to do, Harrison! You’re nobody!’ Steve didn’t give Tommy the satisfaction of turning around as he walked up to the school gates, even as his yells made everyone nearby turn to look. ‘What are you, some kind of faggot?’</p><p>He actually laughed then, and threw up a middle finger just before he walked into the building.</p><p>‘Grow up, jerkoff.’</p><p>Quickly, before going inside, he turned to acknowledge the two others nearby and smiled. It was a rictus grin, sure, but it was something. Nancy returned the smile, gratefully, warmly, and it lit up her face. The greater novelty, though, was the attention Jonathan was giving him. He was staring right back into Steve’s face as if nothing around them existed. In fact, both of them were looking right at him, just for a moment.</p><p>It was the moral high point of his day. Tommy and Carol did their very best to wear him down with an unrelenting campaign of stink eye, and only the bittersweet image of Nancy and Jonathan’s cautious respect sustained him until the final bell.</p>
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